Local celebrity coming through

Well, it's coming to an end: just 1,5 week left in Zugdidi. Today will probably be my last day with planned lessons, next week it will all be revision exercises and then the exams on the weekend before I'm off to Batumi to meet Fabian. Can't believe how quickly time has passed, it still feels as if I just arrived last week. I'm really supposed to be putting together the exam now, but instead I'm procrastinating. Business as usual!

Not an awful lot has happened lately, but one piece of news showed up today. Two of my students work for the local newspaper, and they got the idea to write an article about the Swedish intern who came to teach English. So they sent a girl to interview Imedi's boss and me (of course S. had to interpret). The article was printed yesterday and my student brought it for us to see today. I'm a local celebrity, on the front page even! And the picture was taken by my camera (although I was not behind it), in case you want to compare the quality with the other pictures...

So yeah, big in Zugdidi. Haven't read the article, for obvious reasons, but I remember the questions pretty well: do I like Georgia, do I like Georgian food? They didn't ask me if I meant to marry a local man, but I'm sure that was on everybody's mind! Instead they asked me what I knew about Georgia before I came, and whether my experience here was different from what I had read before coming.

The biggest difference was of course the security situation. I can't believe that UD (the Swedish Foreign Ministry) still advises against all travel "to the immediate vicinity" of the borders to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Actually, the latter I can understand, or at least not comment on since I haven't been anywhere near there, but Zugdidi and Abkhaz border area are not dangerous - as long as you use your common sense and don't charge against the border guards or the army that patrol the area with toy guns or something. The image you get of Georgia in Western media is unfortunately still very conflict-focused and gives the impression of it being a dangerous country. I'd say it's not any more dangerous than most countries out there. Right now, a new conflict doesn't seem very likely, with a slight thaw apparent in Georgian-Russian relations (for example, they've recently started with direct flights between Georgia and Russia). There may of course be more problems up ahead with the breakaway regions, unless Georgia gives up on having them returned to Georgian control (which is a pretty impossible goal, given that Georgia hasn't had any type of control over these territories pretty much since its independence). But right now, people just want to get on with life and live in peace.

Zugdidi used to be quite a dive maybe 5-7 years ago, and some writings on the city still reflect this. But Saakashvili is immensely popular here for good reason - investment from the government cleaned up the town and made it much safer. And here's a more well-written account on IDP issues than I can mangage.